How to Fight Self-Rejection & Cringe to Hit Publish on Linkedin
Tips from Creative Professionals & the Mindset they Adopt to share their Work publicly
To post, or not to post… that is the question.
Shakespeare might have said this if he was a chronic LinkedIn user.
It is super scary to write on LinkedIn. We don’t speak much about this.
There are hundreds of professional yappers who happily talk about how to create the sexiest of hooks, how to format your atomic essay, how to create a carousel post, how to say X and not Y, insist that you force feed this Claude prompt to work smarter, and blah blah to the power of hundred and what not!
There are dozens and dozens of such yappachinos across the platform where everyone is desperate for attention — either for a job or to give a job.
I follow many writers. They all seem to have a common content calendar; they share their two cents on the craft of writing, personal growth, and leaving impact.
But they miss out the most important question:
How do you actually hit the publish button?
How do you fight the self-rejection and the soaring cringey feeling?
How do you leap through this wall (even if your writing has covered the basics)?
I first asked this question to my friend, a senior journalist H R Venkatesh, who took a few weeks to respond.
I started asking this same question with others too.
I reached out to people across the globe with diverse careers.
Here are their response:
When Maya Grossman made her Substack debut, I asked, ‘How did you keep showing up on LinkedIn?’. She said: “I make it a point to not care what people who are not putting themselves out there think.”
The best-selling author and executive coach now has over 13OK followers on her LinkedIn.
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Noah Greenberg is the CEO at Stacker, an earned syndication platform connecting media outlets. I love his takes on the publishing industry and new content trends.
Sometime ago, he wrote on LinkedIn; “You're probably very bad at LinkedIn. It's not your fault. I was too. Then I posted too many times and hit 45,100 followers last night.”
I asked him my question and he said, “Write things that you truly believe”.
When I reached out to content strategist Meenank Minnu and ghostwriter Sreelakshmi A C, I respected their honesty.
Meenank said, “We are not as relevant as it looks like.”
Sreelakshmi agreed on the difficulty to be consistent. “There are still some days when all I want to do is delete LinkedIn and just ignore the world.” She added, “…it cost me so much in my career...”
Another person I love to read on LinkedIn is Paula Simpson for her fabulous sense of humour. The CEO at NeonTrumpet said, “Just do it!”
Paula suggested to read ‘Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn’ by Krishna Veera Vanamali. This is hands down the best guide for LI ever!
Maria Ledentsova, whom I respect for her practical content growth playbooks, said, “Trying is really cool. Most people don’t try, but you only have one life, so you got to do all you can to build towards your dreams.”
James Martin, a ghostwriter from Spain, wrote this short essay on LinkedIn, “I’ve posted everyday on LinkedIn since January 2025. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…”
I was naturally bugged to ask him my question and he said, “[You need]…a little bit of crazy.” (Tell me about it James!)
My dear friend/coach/mentor Alan Soon, Co-founder of Splice, had a different take. He said I feel cringey because “you value honesty and authenticity”. Indeed, we all do! “Your desire is honesty. That’s something not everyone in the world has.”
I have had such hundreds of lovely chat with Alan in the last 4+ years of knowing him and I hold his coaching skills in super high value.
(If you need a thinking partner to help you with AI agents and LLMs for your business, then Alan is your guy).
After nearly a month, Venkatesh who is with ICFJ+ as Lead for Publishing Products — effectively editor of IJNet.org, sent a voice note. I love he always sits with my questions and takes time to respond.
He said, “Until you find a voice that works for you, that makes you feel it authentically represents what is inside of you — and at the same time is also something that the world won’t accept — that is when you know you can share things without feeling the cringe feeling. I am not saying that this is the truth, but this is a truth.”
Venkatesh went about how he markets his game WordSutra via WhatsApp. He says his word game represents who he is and therefore, he doesn’t feel cringe to share about it to his network. He also warned about laziness in showing up to post more often, which I’m honestly guilty of sometimes.
So to post, or not to post???
Well, we got one life. I’d say why the heck not! Smash the POST button!
Read earlier editions of below:
And that’s all for today!
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